CTOT #54: Is BPMN for Business Users?

41 mins

BPMN was designed for the generally modeling (and documenting) the processes of businesses and in this episode of CTO Tuesday Dr. Michael Rowley discussed the kind of people who are most likely to be successful at using the constructs. He argued that general purpose concepts of BPMN process modeling are probably too much for the typical business user, but proposed that BPMN can be used ONLY if the problem is significantly narrowed down. He explained that this is the exact approach that drove the requirements for the Web-based Screenflow Designer (formerly Socrates). Dr. Rowley then described how screenflows narrow the scope and use a small subset of BPMN that business users can easily manage. To further illustrate his point he demonstrated the creation of screenflows with a subset of BPMN. Michael also briefly demonstrated some of the more sophisticated BPMN capabilities and explained why they are needed for general purpose process modeling.